


Touch

by maladroitcore



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Confessions, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pre-Relationship, Victuuri Week 2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-11
Updated: 2017-02-11
Packaged: 2018-09-23 12:55:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9658286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maladroitcore/pseuds/maladroitcore
Summary: You can only know your idol for so long before they become less like an idol and more like… Yuuri’s not sure, actually.(a little epilogue to the hair poke scene in ep 4)





	

**Author's Note:**

> I posted this on tumblr at the beginning of Victuuri week bc I didn't realize you had to wait to get an ao3 ;;
> 
> it's here now~
> 
> this was written for the day 1 prompt- Yuuri: confessions.

They’re untying their skates when Victor asks the question. “Yuuri, why did you actually poke my hair?”

Yuuri freezes in the middle of pulling his right foot (pained, bruised) out from its skate. “What?”

“Earlier, in the rink,” Victor chirps. He’s not even looking at Yuuri, he’s looking down at his own feet and gently massaging his own pains and bruises with an easy, relaxed smile on his face. “You poked my hair.” As if Yuuri needed reminding. “If it wasn’t because you thought it was thinning, why did you poke it?”

_Why’s he even asking?_ Yuuri thinks as he finally pulls the skate off his right foot and gently places it down on the floor. Even if he was the one who had poked Victor’s hair, he was hardly the person to ask why. Even on the best of days, he didn’t really understand how his brain worked. How was he supposed to explain something as trivial as impulsively poking his coach’s hair?

(The worst part was that it didn’t _feel_ trivial. Yuuri had been resisting the urge to touch Victor’s hair for weeks now, and he could hardly forget the hundreds of times that he’d fantasized about running his hands through Victor’s long hair as a teenager. Getting to touch his hair was some kind of weird dream that Yuuri hadn’t even really realized he’d had until his finger was already resting against the part in his idol’s hair.)

“I’m not sure.” It’s the truth, but the words sound a little hollow, a little insincere, even to his own ears. He gets around to pulling his left foot out from its skate.

Victor glances up from massaging his own feet and pouts. It’s clear that he isn’t satisfied with that answer either. “Think about it and then tell me. I want to know.”

Victor Nikiforov, Russian legend and top men’s singles skater, wants to know about Yuuri Katsuki, a dime-a-dozen Japanese skater. Wants to know something as trivial as why Yuuri Katsuki would want to touch his (soft, beautiful, otherworldly silver) hair.

Yuuri can practically hear his younger self rejoicing. At the moment though, having to figure out his own motivations just so he can tell them to Victor is only giving him a vague sense of anxiety.

He thinks anyways. He wants Victor to know.

Victor gets up from his seat on the bench across from Yuuri and eases down next to him instead, gently resting a hand on his back between his shoulder blades. The touch is comfortable now, in a way that Yuuri couldn’t have even imagined just a few months ago.

Victor is closer than Yuuri _ever_ could have imagined, back when he’d first seen Victor’s skating on that small box TV in the Ice Castle more than a decade ago. Back then, he’d been an idol, a guiding light that Yuuri had chased all the way to the Grand Prix Final. Now, after weeks of sharing his time and space, he was less of an idol, less of a god, and more of… more of…

… he can’t let himself start thinking about that. He’s on dangerous ground as it is. Any more and he might actually start to hope for something that he can’t have.

Still, Victor is at his side and his fingers are against his back. He’s now lightly pressing circles into his skin in some kind of pseudo massage, spreading a warmth over the common aches and pains that Yuuri’s grown accustomed to after years of skating. After he finishes putting away his skates and putting on his shoes, he straightens his back and gently dislodges the touch so that he can pull his jacket on. While he rues the loss of their contact, Yuuri can still feel its leftover heat underneath his jacket.

He gets up from the bench first.

Before Victor can rise from the seat next to him, he turns and firmly plants his hands on Victor’s shoulders, pushing down and keeping him seated. There’s a moment where Yuuri can see Victor’s shock, a visible tension seizing his shoulders and pulling the smile off of his face.

“It’s because you were there.”

The tension escapes almost immediately. Victor sighs and even has the gall to look disappointed. “You touched my hair because I was there and you could do it? Yuuri, that’s not really a reason at all.”

“I’ve…” How could Yuuri get him to see how important that was? That Victor was even there, at Yuuri’s side, that he was close enough to touch. “I’ve wanted to do it for a while.”

“A while? For how long?” He still doesn’t get it, but Yuuri knows how to make him understand now.

“Ever since I first saw you. Ever since you first inspired me to skate.” Victor’s eyes go wide and a blush starts to color his cheeks. “You were my idol for years, and now you’re closer than I ever could have hoped for. I couldn’t have done that before.”

Even saying that feels like throwing his glass heart at Victor’s feet. Victor could break his heart apart right now if he wanted to, and Yuuri wouldn’t be able to stop him. It’s a level of vulnerability with another person that Yuuri has avoided as much as possible for his entire life. Still, there’s more that he has to say. He has to make Victor understand.

He can feel his fingers nervously curling into the fabric of Victor’s shirt. “You were my idol for years,” he repeats, “but now you’re here. Of course I’d want to touch your hair. I… I wanted to be closer to you.”

Yuuri can feel his face growing uncomfortably warm as he awkwardly removes his hands from Victor’s shoulders. He doesn’t move from his seat, even without the pressure of Yuuri’s palms keeping him there. If anything, Victor looks alarmingly limp, ready to fall over at the slightest push. There’s still a noticeable blush on his face— it’s almost spread to his ears now, actually, and his mouth is even slightly open in surprise.

Yuuri savors the expression for only a moment before turning away and hastily grabbing his bag, not even bothering to sling it over his shoulder. He marches towards the front exit of the Ice Castle.

_Why did I say that._ Yuuri’s nerves (which had been blissfully absent as he’d literally held Victor down by the shoulders and told him exactly why he wanted to touch his hair, because obviously that was something that he had to do) were now back at full force and pushing him to get as far away from the situation as possible. He could have just not answered the question, he could have just made up some excuse, he could have done _literally anything else_ —

There’s a clatter as Victor abruptly gets to his feet and follows Yuuri. “Wait, say that again!” he wails, his hand firmly grabbing Yuuri’s shoulder. For all the comfort that his touch had given only minutes ago, all it does now is kick Yuuri’s post-confession embarrassment into overdrive.

“No,” Yuuri mutters as he hastily waves a good-bye to Yuuko, avoiding eye contact all the while. She’s looking up from her position at the front desk now, and he doesn’t have to get a good look at her face to know the sort of grin she (long-time friend and fellow Victor hair enthusiast) had to be wearing.

He attempts to escape through the front door.

Unfortunately, Victor is now grabbing his shoulders with both hands in an ironic mirror of what Yuuri had been doing only moments ago, and his solid grip keeps Yuuri from getting away.

“Yuuko, Yuuri touched my hair earlier today and he just told me it was because he wanted to be closer to me!” Victor proclaims with all the tact of a five-year-old. He tugs Yuuri back by the shoulders, pulling him even closer. The sudden feeling of Victor’s chest against his back pushes an embarrassing squeak out of his lungs.

Yuuri wishes he’d escaped through the door faster. “Victor!” _Why does Yuu-chan need to know that?_ The clear answer is that she doesn’t, and Victor is doing this just to embarrass him.

“Takeshi and I saw, actually,” Yuuko giggles. “We thought you two were getting along well.”

_(Oh god_. He’s never going to be able to get away from this; Takeshi will bring it up to tease him just when he’s almost forgotten about it and Yuuko will be forcing him to describe, in detail, what Victor’s hair felt like and whether or not it measured up to their embarrassingly long childhood discussions about it.)

Yuuri’s face has never been redder in his life. Victor preens for a little while longer before finally letting him go, and he gratefully runs full-speed through the front door.

\---

They’re on the beach halfway through the run back to Yu-topia when Victor asks another question. “Yuuri, do you want to touch my hair again?”

The suddenness of the question makes Yuuri nearly trip over a stray rock. “What? Why?”

Victor hums before breezily responding. “I already said I want to get to know you better. If touching my hair makes you feel closer to me, then I want you to touch my hair.”

“Y-you don’t think it’s weird or anything?” Yuuri’s heart feels ready to keel over and die. _Yuuri_ feels ready to keel over and die. He had impulsively touched Victor’s hair and apparently Victor was fine with him touching it again. Not just fine— he was _asking_ him to touch it again, casual as though he hadn’t just fulfilled another unrealized wish for Yuuri.

“It’s definitely weird that I want to touch your hair, Victor,” he protests.

Victor’s eyes are crinkling up with laughter as he teases, “As long as you aren’t lying and you actually want to touch my hair because you think it’s gotten thin—“

“It’s not! I don’t! I swear!”

Victor’s smile is still as wide as before, but his voice is quiet as he speaks. Yuuri almost has to lean in to hear his words. “Then it’s okay, Yuuri, if you want to be closer. I…”

He gulps and subtly turns his face away so that his expression is unreadable. He’s speaking with a uncharacteristic hesitance.

“I want to be closer to you too.”

A confession for a confession. Victor is meeting him halfway, again.

With a weird pang in his heart, Yuuri feels like he’s misjudged how casual Victor had been in asking his question. There’s no way he can understand why Victor wants to be closer, and he doesn’t believe that he can keep Victor close forever, but it remains true that for now… for now, he wants to be closer.

He wants to be closer.

They slow down to a stop together. The gulls are crying over the sea.

“Can I touch your hair right now then?”

Victor smiles and steps closer, even bending over a little so that the top of his head is closer to Yuuri. “Yes.”

He closes his eyes, waiting.

For a moment, Yuuri finds it difficult to move, difficult to breathe.

Finally, he tentatively raises his right hand up to Victor’s face. His eyelashes flutter for a second as Yuuri’s hand makes contact, before firmly closing again. Yuuri slowly pulls a finger through the fringe of Victor’s hair. Rests his palm to Victor’s cheek, takes in the feeling of Victor’s hair resting underneath the pads of his fingers and over the back of his knuckles, and the warmth of Victor’s skin underneath his hand. Victor even leans into the touch, slowly exhaling as he turns to press his cheek into Yuuri’s palm.

He slowly brings up his other hand, running it up and through Victor’s hair, gently pulling through the occasional tangle until his hand rests against the back of Victor’s head. His hair is still wet from sweat, something that Yuuri’s past fantasies hadn’t considered. Something about its texture is unexpected as well. Everything about the sensation is real.

The strands gather between his fingers, and he ruffles Victor’s hair just to get a closer look at how it looks when it’s messed up. He’s almost certain Victor is going to whine about his hair later, but for now he looks calm and at peace. Completely entrusting himself to Yuuri.

Before he can think about it too much, Yuuri leans up onto his toes and presses his lips to Victor’s cheek, barely centimeters from his mouth.

Victor’s eyes fly open. His breathing hitches. “Yuuri?”

“It was nothing,” he murmurs, pulling his hands away and stepping back, turning away before Victor can say anything else.

Victor will ask him about it later, he’s certain— Victor will make him confront himself, like he always does.

But not now.

“It was nothing. Let’s go, Victor.”

Yuuri starts running again, and Victor falls into step behind him. They run in silence all the way back home.

\---

(Before leaving for his room that night, Victor presses a kiss to Yuuri’s hair. “I’ve wanted to do this for a while, too,” he whispers, and before Yuuri can ask what he means so that he can dispel the traitorous hope clawing at his throat, Victor’s already left and closed the door behind him.)

**Author's Note:**

> there’s an interview somewhere where Kubo-sensei (or some other person who worked on yoi ;; ) calls the hair poke scene the point where Victor the god descended to earth~ or, uh, something like that. in general, it's supposed to be a turning point in how Yuuri relates to Victor, so that’s where I started when it came to writing them
> 
> I have a lot of feelings about that entire summer of pining between Victor and Yuuri that went by mostly off-screen and I hope they came through in the writing lol
> 
> for everyone who left notes and comments in the tags on tumblr before I even put this on ao3, thank you so much!! I've had a lot of fun participating in Victuuri Week and it's all bc of you :3
> 
> shout at/with me on tumblr @maladroitcore


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